Dennis Frick ( Europa Machina) built a 904 replica based on a 914 about 15 years ago for use in PCA club racing. It used a 914 tub from the front firewall back and a tube frame forward. Not sure what he did about the rear shock tower heights. The car is now in France and Barrie at M&W did some repair work on it a few years ago after a racing accident. He said when repairing it that the entire body work had been widened by a couple of inches.

If you need any body parts, Dennis seems to have the molds for just about any variant. I needed the fiberglass mount bracket for the Webasto gas heater and he was able to make me one in only a couple of weeks.

As for "...nice to see a 904 build not bound by budget concerns"; I do have a budget, just larger than yours . I am also hopeful, maybe delusional, that the sum of the parts may be worth more than the parts alone. If money were not a concern, I would have purchased Stan Gold's 904-006 !

Adam - you hit the nail on the head. I am doing the 904 project because I love to build things that I can enjoy later. This gives me far more satisfaction than simply purchasing something. Now I just need to retire so I can do more of what I love .... and less negotiation with the Chinese government.

The first post in this thread showed a couple of photos Barrie sent of the 904 body parts in process. He took his molds off 904-063 owned by Bill Stephens in the U.K., and has added other body styles/parts since. He made his first car in about 1999 and has made about 25 cars since.

The 904 body consists of about 50 separate fiberglass parts (according to Barth’s book). At least 40 of them can be seen in the photo below.

Photo from Barth 904 book showing most, but not all, body parts.

There are many variants of the 904 body:
- Long door or short door. Long doors wrap under the body where short doors open at the top of the chassis. Short doors were only on the very late cars. Photo above shows long doors.
- Kam tail or spoiler
- Fender flares or no flares
- Small scoops on sides for rear brake cooling or larger ones on late 6 cylinder cars

My car will be long doors, spoiler tail, no fender flares and small side scoops.

The first post showed the inner part of the lower nose and the front fenders/windshield frame/roof being laid up. Barrie then mates these parts together in a large dolly as shown below.

Over the years Barrie has made dollies and supports for all the molds since they are used a couple of times per year.

Large unwieldy part!

Henkel made the original 904 bodies using chopped glass fiber sprayed into the molds. Depending on how Fritz felt that day, a body might be thin and light or thick and heavy. Barrie lays his bodies up using several layers of cloth, so weight is generally lower than a factory car and the thickness is more uniform. After all the body parts are laid up and removed from the molds, they are bonded to the chassis in stages. The roll care is installed in the car after the body is bonded to the chassis to ensure the cage is tight to the bodywork inside the car.

More photos will follow as Barrie makes progress. Thanks for following along.

When Gregory Campbell was doing the final assembly of his M&W 904 one thing we discussed was the location of the fuel pumps. The factory owner’s guide said to remove a cover to access them, but it was not clear if the fuel pumps were located in the front trunk or elsewhere. Gregory eventually found a photo showing that the fuel pumps were located on the bulkhead behind the steering rack under the car. But Gregory’s car did not have a cover over this area.

Fast forward a few months and I was looking at auction photos for 904-107 and found a good photo of what this area looks like on an original car.

The portion toward the top of the photo is the cover for the oil cooler. The two vents behind this are where hot air from the oil cooler exits under the car. The panel behind that is the elusive cover over the steering rack, fuel pump and brake master cylinder area.

Knowing this, you can clearly see the panel in the photo with all the body parts:

Green circled part is the oil cooler and steering rack cover.

Better picture of the part are shown below.

Oil cooler and steering rack cover

Side view of oil cooler and steering rack cover.

Looking at the part, it is easy to imagine that when it is removed (in the heat of a race for example) that the thin parts connecting the oil cooler cover to the steering rack cover might get broken and the steering rack cover discarded. Probably about half the 904s I have seen photos of are missing the steering rack cover half of this body part. Barrie said 904-063 that he took molds off of did not have this part, so he had not made the mold for it.

Barrie will now make a mold for this part, but we will modify the original design such that the oil cooler cover and the steering rack cover mount separately so your can take them off independently. I think there may be more times I want to access the fuel pumps and brake master cylinder than I want to access the oil cooler.

Well it has been a while since my last post. Moving back to the US after 6.5 years in China and trying to get everything settled into the new home has left little time for Porsches. But Barrie Martin at M&W has been hard at work on the body and chassis for my car. The entire body shell is now complete.

Rear clamshell for my car in gel coat.

Sargent Rear body.jpg (206.75 KiB) Viewed 17 times

Barrie is now working on the chassis. All M&W cars to date have used square tube for the rear bulkhead around the transmission bell housing, and this is the only part of the chassis that is not almost identical to the original. See the photo below of an earlier M&W chassis compared to a factory chassis.

Barrie has a chassis jig so all the pick up points are known. The problem in making the sheet metal rear bulkhead is knowing the shape of the oval hole around the transmission. We considered laser scanning the chassis of an original car, but then found a more low tech solution. I had a good end on photo of the rear bulkhead and was able to scale it in photo shop to match dimensions provided by Barrie. I then printed it out at 1/1 scale. Had to print it a couple of times to get the dimensions exactly right. The end product is below and was easy to mail to Barrie.

Once Barrie had the scale photo he set about making a prototype of the rear bulkhead. He said it was easier than he thought, but he will need to remake his chassis jig in this area to accommodate the more correct bulkhead construction before he can install all the suspension pick up points. The photos below show Barrie's prototype compared to photos of 904-045, a car originally sold by AFN in London to Dickie Stoopes.

rear part of the prototype bulkhead

Sargent Rear bulkhead 1.jpg (351.46 KiB) Viewed 17 times

Rear part of the prototype bulkhead showing connection to shock/spring tower.

Rear bulkhead 3.jpg (341.36 KiB) Viewed 17 times

prototype top of shock tower.

Rear bulkhead 6.jpg (264.03 KiB) Viewed 17 times

904-045 top of shock tower

Stoopes 904 -3.jpg (354.18 KiB) Viewed 17 times

front of prototype bulkhead

Rear bulkhead 8.jpg (368.75 KiB) Viewed 17 times

So far so good and I am pleased with the progress.

On another front, I head down to San Diego on Sunday to spend a few days at Jacques LeFriant's shop helping reassemble the 4 cam motor for the car. Gregory Campbell is coming too. A future post will cover engine reassembly.

Then on Friday March 1st we will drive up to LA and tour some of the restoration shops before going to the Lit meet on Saturday and Sunday. Hope to see many friends there!